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Tuesday 28 June 2016

The Musketeers 1.1 "Friends and Enemies" Review

                             
D'Artagnan (Luke Pasqualino) and his father, Alexandre (Oliver Cotton) ride to an inn and as D'Artagnan puts away the horses, the men inside are attacked.  One is killed and his father is also killed as one of the men says he's Athos (Tom Burke) of the king's Musketeers.  Of course it's not really him as this is the opening we're not meant to know what he looks like yet at least in the show, oh you know, having to suspend disbelief and all that, even though we do know who Athos really is.  The real Athos wakes up in a room and after drinking wakes himself up with a cold bucket of water and dunking his head into it. D'Artagnan rides to Paris to avenge his father.  He gets a room and in the night a woman arrives with another man and he challenges D'Artagnan to a duel the next day.  She waits for him upstairs and takes his pistol from him when they meet on the stairs.  Later sending the night together.  When D'Artagnan wakes in the morning he finds a bloody dagger in her pillow and takes it with him when he hears a scream.  The man she was with is dead in the bath and they see D'Artagnan with the knife, he escapes through the window.

At the garrison D'Artagnan challenges him to a sword fight.  Athos trying to explain he didn't do it. Constance (Tamla Kari) also telling them they should be ashamed of themselves: three against one. He finally gives up and she takes him to her house and bandages him up.  Louis (Ryan Gage) tells Treville (Hugo Speer) he must find Gaudet (Philip Brodie) who has important letters of his, which he's written to Phillip in Spain in the hopes of peace.  He doesn't want Cardinal Richelieu (Peter Capaldi) to find out.  Treville sends the Musketeers after the men, but Athos is arrested for murder and is thrown into prison, after the same impostor robs a carriage and kills the occupants, telling the drier to tell everyone that Athos spared him.  He accuses Athos before the king.

D'Artagnan helps the others cos he wants to know the truth and they find the men at a castle, the only way is over the bridge.  He knows someone who can help them and Constance pretends to be a prostitute so they can overpower the guard and get in.  D'Artagnan fights the man and is about to kill him when Aramis (Santiago Cabrera) tells him they need Gaudet alive.  But he draws his sword and D'Artagnan has to protect himself, so much for that.  Also Constance is shocked at having to fire the pistol and kill a man to save D'Artagnan.  Porthos (Howard Charles) finds the Musketeers uniforms, however the cardinal already has his hands on the letters, as procured by Milady (Maimie McCoy).   Which was a waste of time really, since Louis already admits to the cardinal what he's done and he says he won't do that again without his counsel, but could come in handy for blackmailing purposes.

They arrive just in time to save Athos before being executed by firing squad with a letter from Louis, as Athos wanted it to be over.  Especially with him contending with the demons of Milady and what he did to her, of course, we know it's Milady who is his wife (reading the books aside) as she also showed D'Artagnan the scar around her neck from the rope.

Aramis has his own woes as he spends time with Adele (Emily Beecham) and has to escape when the cardinal arrives early, aka Armand.  He jumps from the window, or at least must hang there until the Musketeers find him, leaving behind his pistol.  Which she kicks under the bed but doesn't get rid of or sends it back to him.  Of course the cardinal was going to find it and use it against her.  He needed to find who it belonged to but Aramis already told him.  He kills Adele for her betrayal with his pistol and Aramis believes she's deserted him for the Cardinal and to stay at his summer house.  Whilst he's also plotting with Milady who killed the Spanish traitor Mendoza who was a poor lover and he would've betrayed the Cardinal eventually as she tells him.

As an opening episode it had all the right amount of interesting scenes and dialogue to get you hooked and jokes.
Treville: "I've had complaints, an allegation you've been duelling with the cardinal's Red Guards, is it true?"
Athos: "let me think...no...because that would be illegal."

 As already we see the Musketeers are a force to be reckoned with and in constant fights with the Red Guard and detested by the cardinal.  So it's no wonder he does away with his mistress, Adele after he finds out she was with Aramis.  Who jumps out of a window to escape as much the same as D'Artagnan did.  The plot where D'Artagnan spends a night with Milady when we know who she really is was kept going for quite some time as he doesn't know she is Athos's wife and Athos doesn't know about them either.  But already D'Artagnan has an eye for Constance even if she is married and we thought Aramis was meant to be the amorous one!

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